


Return to Sender

by cupofgenmaicha (orphan_account)



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Hitman! Hyunwoo, M/M, Morally Grey Characters, Surgeon! Kihyun, blood and injuries, hired hitman, referenced organized crime, referenced violence/murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:45:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cupofgenmaicha
Summary: "Why are you a surgeon?""To save people's lives.""No." The hitman shakes his head, rustling the paper bag, and Kihyun can imagine the small smile on his lips. "I think you like the thrill."





	Return to Sender

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "Being one of the best surgeon in the town, Kihyun is often called by the higher ups to treat their private investigator/professional hitman/personal assassins. He usually treat the patient without looking at the patient's face for confidential reason. But he noticed he has been treating the same hitman (Shownu) who works for multiple people. He thinks that the man is not loyal but is more worried about the man's health and take a risk to get closer to him" via the [Monsta X Fanfiction Request Forum!](https://mx-requests-forum.tumblr.com)
> 
> I hope the requester is happy with the fic!

At just past midnight, the east wing of the hospital is quiet; hospital administration dims the lights outside the Emergency Room this late at night, and the hallways are cast in long shadows. Kihyun's colleagues are already home performing their pre-bedtime rituals—they say that the after-hours eeriness sends the hairs on the backs of their necks standing to attention. Kihyun laughs whenever he overhears their whispered conversations, smirks as he watches the shivers run down their spines. Unlike his colleagues, Kihyun can only fully breathe once the crush of overenthusiastic medical students retreat back to their dorms and scheduled surgery is over for the day. He feels at ease in the shadows.

His eyes leave the report he’s reviewing and flick around the room, from his framed medical school diploma to the most recent honor—Dr. Yoo Kihyun is once again named Seoul University Hospital’s top general surgeon. Four years and counting.

The intercom near his keyboard beeps, the soft sound making him flinch after hours of silence. His knee bangs against the desk and he hisses as he rubs it.

“This is Dr. Yoo. You may speak,” he says as he presses the button.

“Special delivery downstairs.”

Kihyun checks the time and purses his lips. Presses the button again. “What kind of delivery?”

He’s met with crackling silence—a deafening absence of sound that settles like an itchy blanket around him. After successfully completing a particularly high-risk surgery earlier in the day, he planned to hole up in his office, reading medical journals and writing his report, not chasing down some sketchy delivery. With a puzzled frown, he pulls on his white coat and walks toward the elevator, his footfalls echoing softly in the empty hallway. His office is located in the General Surgery department, the wing nearly opposite to the 24-hour Emergency Room, almost certainly bustling at this time of night.  As he approaches the front desk, a nurse looks up from his paperwork and nods his head in respectful greeting, watching the surgeon's approaching form with furled eyebrows. Face expectant and slightly confused.

A strange tremor runs through Kihyun, making him stop right in the middle of the nearly empty lobby. _It wasn’t the front desk calling._ He knows by the tight knot in the pit of his stomach and the cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. It's the same intuition that has kept him alive and moving forward. 

Always moving forward.

“Shit,” he swears under his breath and nearly runs to the metal staircase to the opposite of the elevator. “Not again, not again.”

He clambers down three additional flights of stairs to the delivery ramp in the rear of the hospital. A wall of heat hits him immediately as he pushes through the double doors; the summer air is a thick, foggy veil and it coats his skin as he searches the impenetrable darkness. No package. No delivery van. Not a soul in sight.

“Hello?” he calls out softly. _Maybe it was a prank call,_ but even as he tries to reassure himself, he knows that it wasn’t.

Then he hears a soft moan, the sound almost inaudible under the constant drone of cicadas. His heartbeat picks up as he squints into the darkness, searching beyond the dimly-lit loading ramp. This time he spots a lump on the ground and immediately rushes to it, feeling around in his coat pocket for a small flashlight. The beam is weak, but he can see well enough to discern that the lump is a man lying on his side. He’s dressed from head-to-toe in black combat gear and there are large, gaping rips slashed into his clothing exposing skin glistening with sweat and caked with drying, coagulated blood.

It’s a hitman—high-level and almost certainly priceless to those who hire him. Kihyun knows from the paper bag covering his head, safeguarding his identity, and the rudimentary calling card stapled to it:

**Return to Sender**

**JR CORP**

No address. No phone number. The surgeon sighs—although the calling card is meaningless anyway; the company changes every time. How many employers does this hitman have?

He kneels, searching for a pulse, and the man begins to thrash around, blindly fighting him off and almost knocking him to the ground.

"So you are alive," Kihyun mutters, relieved.

The hitman stills immediately, his harsh breaths rustling the paper bag. "Dr. Yoo?"

Kihyun grunts an affirmative as he heaves the man up; he bends under his weight, but he’s able to half-walk, half-drag him into the hospital. The sharp scent of copper and sulphur cling to him, their pungency making Kihyun’s eyes water. Adrenaline pumps through his veins with each step he takes—and he should probably feel terrified pressed up so close to a killer, but there’s something thrilling, almost intoxicating, about having such a powerful man at his mercy. He could easily kill him—leave him alone in the shadows, let him bleed out in a long, agonizing death. 

But then he would be no better than the men who dumped him and left without a trace. _Let someone else clean up the mess._  

The man is trembling against him, most likely from the pain, but he’s silent as he drags his left foot at a strange angle behind himself. This hitman shows up more often than any of the others. Almost always dropped off by a different middleman, left to bleed out onto the hard ground with casual neglect; it seems like if he were to die, no one would care. Just another hired man. A dime a dozen. But Kihyun has the gut feeling that they would care about this one. That he is hired for the most demanding, dangerous jobs.

_I heard from your father that you’re a surgeon now. I need your help_ , was all the caller said nearly four years ago. He was a friend of Kihyun's father. A prominent congressman. Compelled by deference to a family friend as well as the oath he had taken, Kihyun hurried to the hospital, not at all understanding the severity of the situation. Not understanding that what he was agreeing to was far more complex and far-reaching than saving the life of one man. When he spotted the man, alone and bleeding out onto the concrete, he called the congressman back. There must be some kind of mistake.

There wasn’t. After that, the men came from all over, half-dead and disoriented—and Kihyun learned to stop asking questions.

Even before he cuts away the hitman’s clothes, he already anticipates what he will see—the body he has mapped out and memorized, touched, sewn, and treated dozens of times before. Strong bands of muscle. Golden skin pockmarked with scars.

And a tattoo—a python wrapped around the man’s thick thigh, its head resting almost serenely against his hipbone, eyes unblinking—and in its mouth, a pink camellia. It's almost ironic how intimately Kihyun knows this man's body when he's never seen his face.

“Rough night?” he asks conversationally as they enter the elevator. The hitman grunts in response; he sounds exhausted. “Well, we’re almost to the Operating Room.”

Once inside the OR, he works quickly. His eyes skitter over the man’s now stripped body, taking in the streaks of mud. The seeping blood. The wounds riddling his torso: a deep cut under his right rib; two bullet wounds grazing his shoulder, another grazing his side and a stab wound near the python’s head. His foot is swollen to the point where it is probably either severely sprained or even broken.

Kihyun sighs. What a mess. 

After pulling on fresh scrubs, he sanitizes and covers his hands with sterile gloves. He begins to thoroughly clean the wounds with antiseptic. The hitman is silent except for a sharp inhale and hissing exhale each time Kihyun touches his serrated skin. The surgeon should really have at least two attending nurses, but he’s alone with his thoughts, working briskly as the man’s breathing becomes more ragged.

"Thank you for not trying to cauterize the wounds yourself this time," Kihyun says lightly, infusing humor into an otherwise grave situation. He will never forget the first night the hitman was dumped outside the hospital. Kihyun was nervous, jolting each time his intercom buzzed, already anticipating the call that had become a monthly occurrence. The rain was pelting his office window, blurring the world outside. An unrelenting force. By the time Kihyun found him, he was already unconscious. He reeked of the alcohol still soaking his side and clasped a lighter tightly in his palm. Kihyun doesn't scare easily, but that night, he was scared.

_Quick and dirty_ , he thinks to himself now as he searches for bullet shards lodged in the hitman's skin; luckily, he was only grazed tonight. Past "deliveries" haven’t been so lucky. He cleans the knife wounds, eyes landing on the python’s unblinking eyes, wondering distantly what it has seen in its lifetime. Kihyun studies the blossom held almost delicately in its mouth; even after seeing it nearly two dozen times, he is still struck by its beauty.

Kihyun touches the paper bag still hiding the man’s face and a strong hand envelops his wrist.

“Leave it,” the hitman grits out between labored breaths.

“You need pain medication this time. The knife wound under your rib is too deep for topical anesthetic,” Kihyun explains, words soft, but matter-of-fact. “It will be excruciatingly painful.”

“I won’t make a sound.”

Kihyun almost argues, but bites his tongue. There’s no time. He needs to act quickly or this man will most likely bleed out and die.

“Fine. Have it your way,” he mutters.

After stitching him up, he tapes sterile bandages over the wounds—and true to his word, the hitman is silent. Kihyun notices unfamiliar scars peppering the hitman's body. He isn't stupid; he knows that the man doesn't come to him every time he's injured. He traces one of the fresh scars with his fingertip. "How did you get this?" he mutters, mostly to himself.

He doesn't expect an answer and the hitman is silent as Kihyun eases him into a cloth hospital gown. His limbs are heavy as lead and Kihyun wouldn't be surprised if he had passed out earlier from the pain. "I—refused a job," he grits out quietly and chuckles, a small, humorless sound. "My boss wasn't too happy."

"Oh." This is the most the hitman has ever shared with him—and it would be wise of Kihyun to staunch the flow of conversation. "You should have come to the hospital. I would have stitched it for you." He internally winces as soon as the words leave his mouth; he shouldn't be offering his services to an unregistered guest—a hitman at that. It's illegal and certainly immoral. But even as he scolds himself, he knows he would cross the line for this man. In a heartbeat.

The hitman is quiet, almost contemplative as he sits up on the edge of the hospital bed and reaches out blindly with one hand. "I've been here so many times, but I've never seen you, and I can't exactly walk up to the front desk and ask for you," he says wryly.

Kihyun doesn't know what possesses him as he takes the hitman's hand and presses his fingers to his face. The man's hand rests motionless against his cheek and Kihyun holds his breath. It feels like an eternity before he begins to move careful, searching fingers over Kihyun's forehead, his nose, his closed eyelids.

"Do you want to know what I look like?" The hitman's voice is hushed, his offer dangerous.

"I shouldn't," Kihyun whispers back, but the denial sounds weak even to his own ears.

"Close your eyes."

Kihyun huffs, chafing at the command, but closes his eyes. His breathing becomes shallow, his heart hammering against his ribcage as he waits. Adrenaline courses through his body and he realizes that it isn't fear, it's anticipation that is making his fingers twitch against his thigh. Kihyun feels his hand being lifted and he forces out a tense breath, pushing away the warning sirens blaring in his head, screaming at him that what he's doing is grossly against protocol. Ignoring how everything else he has done tonight—as well as countless others—was never part of the oath he took, no matter how much he tries to tell himself the opposite.

Kihyun hears rustling as the hitman slowly guides his hand up and under the paper bag, his movements cautious. Almost trusting. Without his sense of sight, every other sense is heightened and the first sensation he notes is how warm the man's skin is under his fingertips. How soft his cheek feels despite the rest of his body being riddled with scars. Hot puffs of air hit his skin as he moves his fingers along a chiseled jawline, feeling rough stubble on his chin. Then he glides his fingertip over soft, thick lips and he feels more than hears the other man's sharp intake of breath. Feels his own breath catch in his throat.

Kihyun pulls his hand away and licks his lips. His body feels hot. Skin buzzing. He shakes his head, trying to clear away the web of want he feels tight in his chest and heavy in his gut. He almost reaches back out again just for another touch. Another hint of the man for whom he's risked both his own life and medical license, but doesn't actually know.

“Now it’s time for the MRI—” Kihyun announces as he blinks his eyes open, abruptly punching a hole through the intimate silence.

“No MRI," the hitman volleys back.

Kihyun takes a deep breath and releases it, stating calmly, “You need an MRI, Mr.—”

“Hitman.”

“Right. Hitman-ssi,” he says, almost smiling as he talks to the paper bag, imagining the eyes underneath staring back at him. They felt intelligent and almost kind underneath his fingertips, but that can't be right. He's a killer, Kihyun reminds himself, feeling as if his worldview has been knocked off-kilter. He takes the hitman's swollen foot into his hands, studies the skin mottled with deepening bruises, and carefully checks for range of motion. “At least one bone in your foot is probably broken. I need to know for sure in order to put a cast on it.”

“No cast.”

How can someone who was so close to death be so infuriating? Kihyun pinches the bridge of his nose in an attempt to keep his temper under control. “I will carry you over my shoulder if I have to, Hitman-ssi. You will be getting an MRI before you leave the hospital!”

“Fine—” the hitman says, voice full of mocking challenge, and Kihyun swears the man is smirking, “—carry me.”

Alright. Challenge accepted. Kihyun squares his shoulders as he studies the man sitting on the edge of the operating table, muscles pulled taut underneath the thin hospital gown—and he must be exhausted because something about the image of flinging a hired hitman over his shoulder, ass exposed to the world, makes absurd laughter bubble into his throat.

“Are you laughing at your wounded patient, Dr. Yoo?” There’s a smile in the hitman’s voice despite the pain he must be feeling.

Kihyun shakes his head even though the man can’t see him and takes his hand, leading him to an empty wheelchair.

“Yep,” he answers lightly as he settles the man into the wheelchair and leans down to whisper next to his ear. “What are you going to do about it? Kill me?”

Kihyun hears a muffled chuckle as he wheels him into the imaging room where he studies the images of the man's foot and ankle, determining that the bones in his foot aren't broken, but his ankle is severely sprained. He bandages the man's ankle despite his protests and eases him onto the couch in the corner of his office.

"This is my private office. No one should disturb you," he assures as he places a pillow under the man's head and another underneath his injured foot. "I'm going to go home and change, but I'll be back in a few hours."

The man nods silently and Kihyun wouldn't be surprised if he has already drifted to sleep considering the hellish night he's had, but fingertips curl into Kihyun's sleeve just as he turns to leave. "Hyunwoo." The word seems to push out of him. It hangs in the air between them. The only other sound in the room is the clock on the wall above Kihyun's desk as it tic tic tics away time. He can almost imagine the man nervously licking his lips. "My name is Hyunwoo. Just in case—" another pause, a shift, "—just thought someone should know."

Kihyun nods, repeats the name softly, committing it to memory. As he does so, he feels a prickle on his skin. A warning that he pushes away. Ignores. "See you in a few hours, Hyunwoo," he says. His voice sounds odd in his ears.

Hyunwoo tightens his grip for a moment then drops his hand—and Kihyun has the bizarre urge to reach out and hold it. To feel their palms nestled together and fingers laced. He stares at Hyunwoo's hand a beat too long before finally turning to leave. As he clicks the door closed behind himself, he knows with an unwavering certainty that the couch will be empty when he returns. And that he will be back to holding his breath. Waiting for the next message. The next delivery.

Kihyun sometimes daydreams about leaving this all behind. He could assume a new identity, move to Japan and spend his days making ramen in a small country town three hours north of Tokyo. 

But he is in too deep now. He cares too much.

All he can do is wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! What did you think? Comments, kudos, etc really make my day!


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